DOD names new Marine commandant

Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has been tapped to be the next leader of the Marine Corps.

The Pentagon announced Thursday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had selected Dunford to be the service’s 36th commandant.

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Dunford has served as the assistant commandant to the Marine Corps under current chief Gen. James Amos, who has had, at times, a rocky relationship with Capitol Hill.

Last month Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) said Amos had missed a deadline to responded to a whistleblower complaint he issued nearly two months before.

Jones, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, grilled Amos at a March 12 hearing about the firing of Marine judge advocate Maj. James Weirick, who accused Amos and others of inappropriately using their authority to punish Marines standing trial for urinating on Taliban corpses.

Jones, whose state is home to Fort Bragg, one of the service's largest installations, also called for an oversight hearing into a Marine Corps decision to remove the news magazine Marine Corps Times from newsstands at the front of military commissaries and place it in less prominent locations. The publication uncovered the emails that traced the decision directly to Amos.